It's A Valentines Day Helping Hands Face Off!

Feb 13

Feb 13 It's A Valentines Day Helping Hands Face Off!

I think most anyone that has picked up a soldering iron in the past century has used the traditional mechanical helping hands, which usually come with a magnifying glass and are gnerally super cheap. After some finicky finagling, they usually get the job done- but just barely. With more LED projects lined up ahead of me, I was eager to replace them with something less janky. It also just so happened my amazing wife wanted to know what I wanted for Valentine’s Day and we had previously set a $50 limit :D

Enter Quad Hands.

We went with the Quad Hands Workbench Helping Hands. The first thing you notice upon unboxing the American-made device is that it’s solid. (Actually, to be nitpicky, the first thing I actually noticed was the label was applied crooked, which to be honest, while not a huge deal, does seem a little odd for something that is presented and priced as a pretty premium product). But yeah, it’s heavy. The overall feeling is one of quality (aside from the lack of attention to detail in the labeling department). I was ready to throw my crappy ones away (or at least repropose them to hold polaroids on my desk or something; even sketched out an idea for the b-roll. And then I tried to use them in a project.

$#%@!

I was recording last week’s 12v LED sign making tutorial, and they would just not stay in place when i was trying to wire up my LEDs. I would push them into position, and they would spring back- a not-insignificant amount- as soon as I removed my hands. I thought helping hands were supposed to stay where you put them? After wrestling with them for 20 minutes, I eventually just grabbed my old crappy ones and they worked immediately.

I was confused. These things have so many 5 star reviews on Amazon. But I was clearly not the only person having this issue based on some cranky reviews. Anyhow. I figured I just had bad luck with them and was going to document my experience in amazon review of my own, complete with some photos.

The more I see that crooked label, the more it grinds my gears. Come on y’all.

Hold up, Robrob.

I set up the first photo, and removed my hands to capture the arms flopping out of position. They didn’t. I tried moving them around, and sure enough, everywhere I put them, they stayed. Then it dawned on me- the first project I worked on, I had already glued my LEDS down to my workpiece, and I was trying to hold things down flat to my horizontal workbench. That caused the arms to bounce off 100% of the time. But, if I suspended the items I was working on in the air, these things work like magic!

Good news and bad news.

The good news is for working on things you can fully hold- such joining wires together, or connecting wires to LEDs, or little doodads to PCBs- they are awesome. But you probably shouldn’t throw your old helping hands away, as the quad hands are kinda worthless at holding things flat down against a flat surface. The old school crappy ones do that just fine, they just suck at everything else. So yeah- good news is they are pretty awesome at some things, the bad news is they aren’t decent at all things.